Kogan Mobile 'approaching' 400k customers

Kogan Mobile has reported revenue of AU$12 million for FY18, up 233.3 percent year on year from AU$3.6 million, with the provider claiming over 1 percent of all mobile phone users across Australia.

According to Kogan.com, it is “approaching 2 percent” of the 19.7 million mobile phone users it said there are in Australia, which would equate to around 394,000 Kogan Mobile customers.

In terms of overall gross profit contribution to Kogan.com, the Australian online retailer electronics manufacturer and retailer reported its mobile segment as accounting for 14.9 percent for FY18, up from 7 percent in FY17.

“Due to the commission-based model, Kogan Mobile incurs minimal operating costs, with marketing being the key cost,” Kogan.com said in its financial results report.

“In addition, we expect Kogan Mobile to continue its strong growth.”

The company also pointed to its upcoming FY19 launch of Kogan Mobile New Zealand, which will also piggyback off the Vodafone network and tap into the 3.8 million mobile phone users across the nation.

Kogan.com had in June announced signing a partnership agreement with Vodafone NZ to launch prepaid mobile offerings in New Zealand, with the former company’s executive director David Shafer cited Kogan Mobile’s success in Australia as an MVNO in making its decision to launch in New Zealand.

“In Australia, Kogan Mobile has been delivering on its promise to save Aussies more of their hard-earned money, and hundreds of thousands of customers have already migrated to Kogan Mobile in Australia over the past two years,” Shafer said at the time.

Kogan Mobile has yet to reveal how much plans will cost in New Zealand. The Vodafone NZ network provides mobile coverage to 98.5 percent of the population, with 95 percent covered by 4G services.

“Kogan Internet launched during April 2018, and has some of the most competitively priced NBN plans in the market. Kogan.com has a strong commercial relationship with Vodafone, and there is a joint ambition to grow Kogan Internet significantly in FY19,” the company said.

In total for FY18, Kogan.com reported net profit of AU$14.1 million, up 277 percent, on revenue of AU$412.3 million, up 42 percent. The growth was driven by all products, customers, and verticals, Kogan.com said.

Statutory earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) were AU$26 million, up from AU$16.5 million last year.

Kogan.com then announced in June last year that it would also be launching NBN services sometime in 2018 with Vodafone, at the time saying they would also extend their mobile broadband agreement out to 2022, with “significant incentives” for both companies to continue the partnership thereafter.

On the sidelines of CES earlier this year, Ruslan Kogan told ZDNet that the online retailer is in a better position than Australia’s major telcos in the NBN services market, because it has never had to bear the expenses of building out fixed-line infrastructure investment, only to have to move customers across to the NBN.

“We are in a brilliant position in that industry because … you’ve got all these telcos that have fixed infrastructure that have had capital expenses building out networks over the last few decades — all of that just becomes meaningless, and everyone gets to buy at the same price from NBN and it becomes a customer acquisition play: Who can acquire customers the cheapest,” he told ZDNet.

“Our cost of acquisition is the cheapest, and we can pass that saving onto the customer. So we’re very excited by this; it’s basically a government-mandated switchover of a huge utility that people want, need, and are using more and more of, and we will have an incredibly competitive price on it.”

Having never undertaken a large fixed-line infrastructure spend, Ruslan Kogan says his company is in a better position than most to offer ‘incredibly attractive’ services, especially with NBN currently focused on repairing customer experience issues.

For the 2017 financial year, the company’s Vodafone mobile play accounted for only AU$3.6 million of its AU$289.5 million revenue total as it readies the launch of its NBN offering on the telco’s network.

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